Reading Proust in Berkeley

November 2012

11/07/2012

Proust’s A laRechcerche and the Dreyfus Affair (The Guermantes Way pp.135-257)

“The pleasure an artist offers. . . is to convey another universe to us” Nabokov (infl.)

Proust and History/Politics

Dreyfus affair comes to the fore in this section to demonstrate that it is a key subtext of the novel. Overarching questions for this topic/presentation would be:

-- a unique subtext for both the novel and Proust’s career, how/why this particular affair?

Notably other momentous events around this time hardly receive any mention

-- why does it come up in this section in particular?

-- why is the Affair a key area of both historical (Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism) and contemporary research on Proust (Jacqueline Rose 2010 study)?

-- How do/should we, as casual readers, think about this aspect of the novel? Are there lessons about politics swirling around us? (Social institutions and their transformation)

My thought: Dreyfus affair subtends two key thematic constellations: the transformation of French society and Judaism’s elusive status throughout (Swann, Bloch, Pr.) -- touching upon this theme, invoking it, is plucking a string reverberating throughout the “cathedral” of the novel

***

Beginning Quotes: from Le Coté de Guermantes (Sazerat/father, Rachel, then in salon)

Rapid Modernization of 19th century: the prodigious reconstruction of Paris during the 1850s and ‘60s intensified feelings of “indeterminacy” by destroying neighborhoods, abolishing familiar vistas, and estranging Parisians from their past (cf. Benjamin/Harvey)

Political Contingencies and Catastrophes: The Franco-Prussian debacle of 1870-71, that toppled Napoléon III from his imperial throne, informed social, political, and cultural life in the last third of the century, framing a bitter debate over the country’s heart and soul. It was a nation divided (particularly around nationalism and military)

Secularization and Religious Backlash, e.g., La Vie je Jésus by Ernest Renan, four years after Origins of Species, sells over 100,000 copies when 5,000 was a huge hit – its popularity said to be greatest since Luther’s; the Senate debates banning book. For second instance, Gustave Flaubert declared that the really decisive issue for France was neither the (prospect of) war with Prussia nor the enfeeblement of Napoléon III. The only important thing, he wrote, was religion or “clericalism” (role of church in state)

Culminates in Paris Commune (spring 1871), just months before Proust’s birth in Paris suburb, Commune declares they are inaugurating a new era of scientific, positive, experimental politics” (Apr. 19); secular. of schools and hospitals; really it was a type of unresolved civil war (Marx’s pamphlet); “bloody week” (at least 6k killed, 4k exiled)

Alfred Dreyfus: convinced French patriot, 35, rising artillery officer in general staff when first tried, from Alsatian family that had chosen French citizenship after 1871 (!), wealthy textile family. Assimilated Jew (of at most 300,000 in France, w. 40,000 in Algeria).

The Affair began with the discovery, in a garbage can, of a secret memorandum (‘bordereau’) addressed to Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, military attaché at the Paris German embassy. Starts line of suspicious documents: bordereau (fall 1894), le petit bleu (names Esterhazy, March1896), ‘le faux henry’ (false letter naming Dreyfus, 1896).

Typical rhetoric from right-wing press at time: Father Vincent de Paul Bailly wrote in La Croix. “Whereas Judas belonged to the people of God, being the apostle chosen by the Master, the Jewish officer did not belong to the French Nation. Our society has already been punished, but its suffering is not at an end—our treasures, our banks, our papers, our railroads, and our army are caught in the spiderweb of Judaism” (Judas metaphors rampant; periodic anti-Semitic riots); later Croix calls for expulsion of Jews from France

Zola and Proust: Zola already anti-anti-Semitic; Jan 13, 1898: the famed “J’accuse” letter by Zola in L’Aurore; intellectual in public sphere; chamber of deputies votes to bring him to trial – shortly after, a petition supporting Zola and Dreyfus is initiated by, among others, Proust, who convinces Anatole France to sign, published in L’Aurore.

Zola trial Feb 7-23, 1898, now utter division of public opinion, (new media), bring to light a secret file used in original case never public; citation of “le faux Henry” (author found dead in March 1898); Zola convicted; appeal May 23, convicted 2nd time, flees

Copious anti-Zola rhetoric (his father Venetian); Continued flashpoint: Alfred Dreyfus actually shot at ceremony interring Zola after the affair at Panthéon in 1908.

Conclusion: What does this all mean in/for French History? For Proust?

“At the end of the nineteenth century, in one sector of public opinion, a fortress-France nationalism asserted itself whose mission was to defend the cohesive social organism against modernity/It directed its antagonism first and foremost against the democratic and liberal regime, the “Jewish, Masonic Republic,” but beneath the political agenda one observed a spiritual reaction against decadence by people who understood the defense of French interests to be that of a completed civilization at war with the new mobility of things and beings [aka modernity – JF]… Anti-Dreyfusards banked on two institutions: the Church and the army. Organized in accordance with principles of unity and hierarchy, these served, by their very nature, to strengthen the social fabric.” (historian Michael Winock)

Jaimey started us off with a fascinating and very thorough presentation. He explained that his aim for the evening was a simple one: to provide our reading group with the historical context for the Dreyfus Affair.

At the top of his remarks, though, Jaimey told a personal story. He mentioned that back in college, when he first read In Search of Lost Time, he read it very differently than he does today. Returning to that same three-volume more recently, he noticed right away that the underlining he did some 22 years ago was, as he put it, "somewhat impressionistic."

In other words, the younger Jaimey was looking for memorable sentences, literary effects, plot points; he was tracking his own responses -- but without tying it all together. Now, however, he has a more clearly defined interpretive frame. Now he keeps in mind, above all, the historical context.

It's not that Jaimey seeks to block the cascade of associations in his own mind. (I'm guessing he still enjoys that more personal aspect of reading Proust -- right Jaimey?) But by keeping in mind the historical context he also hopes to slip out of the confines of his own experience. He seeks to take flight, as it were, and then to land somewhere else.

When reading In Search of Lost Time that "somewhere else" is France at the time of the Dreyfus affair.

Perhaps thinking that we might view such a (forgive me!) lofty ambition skeptically, he shared with us a statement by Vladimir Nabokov in support of this same approach to reading fiction.

"The pleasure an artist offers," Nabokov insisted,"... is to convey another universe to us."

Having thus primed us as to the importance of historical context, Jaimey went on to describe the Dreyfus Affair in some detail.

Not too far into Jaimey's presentation, Ken made a helpful distinction between two types of common anti-semitism: objections to Judaism as a religion, on the one hand, and objections to the Jewish "race," on the other. Jaimey agreed with Ken that the concerns in the anti-Dreyfus establishment about the presence of the Jewish community in France were not so much objections to the religion itself but more a question of the perceived foreignness or "otherness," of this particular group of people. It was to this invented category of the Jewish race that they objected (this is what today we would call, after Foucault, the "discursive" meaning of the Jews in 19th century French society).

I found this understanding of the anti-semitism of the French in the time of the Dreyfus Affair -- i.e. a free-floating anti-semitism, perhaps best seen as a kind of collective creation, untethered to any one aspect of the Jewish people themselves -- very helpful. It made the treatment of Bloch at Mme de Villeparisis' party both more plausible -- the urge for conformity being the engine behind it -- and also more ominous in my mind.

But then Jaimey made an additional point. He read Proust's explanation for the elusiveness of all truth in politics:

"Whereas, even when a political truth is enshrined in written documents, it is seldom that these have any more value than a radiographic plate on which the layman imagines that the patient's disease is inscribed in so many words, whereas in fact the plate furnishes simply one piece of material for study, to be combined with a number of others on which the doctor's reasoning powers will be brought to bear and on which he will base his diagnosis. Thus the truth in politics, when one goes to well-informed men and imagines that one is about to grasp it, eludes one" (GW, 326).

Funny to think of Proust anticipating Foucault's notion of "discursive meaning"! So the Dreyfus Affair can be understood as a symptom of a deeper anxiety and uncertainty in society about the epistemology of truth, or what we can know. (I mentioned that I think of the epistemic closure of Fox News as a 21st century symptom of this... Just make up your own facts!)

As we began to talk about the Dreyfus Affair more generally, several French members of our group -- Marie-José, Florence -- recalled the schoolbooks of their youth, which impressed upon them the deep divisions in French society caused by this controversy.

Yet when Ken asked directly "But why? Why was it so important?" the French in our group appeared almost baffled by the question. The answer, it seemed (though still out of reach to many of us Americans), was for them too obvious for words.

I suggested at this point that, perhaps, the native English speakers in the group, living as we do in an Anglo-American culture shaped by the English Reformation (Henry the VIII threw off the authority of the Catholic Church in 1529 so that he could marry Anne Boleyn and have another go at producing a male heir), are at a disadvantage here. We find it difficult to appreciate how truly all-or-nothing was the fusion of religion with identity in France at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.

It may be useful for us to remember, I argued, that since the Catholic Church had been woven deeply into the institutions of the French monarchy for centuries longer than in England, the division between those anti-Dreyfusards and the the Dreyfusards was more than a mere agitation; it presented a fundamental question of national identity. Just as had been experienced during the Revolution and the Terror, such divisions carried with them the real possibility of violence -- which indeed was meted out on many of the participants in the Dreyfus Affair, including Dreyfus himself, Émile Zola, and others. French people get this in their gut (despite the secularization of the country in years since). For the rest of us it is more attenuated.

Hence the importance of trying to understand historical context!

We gave the floor back to Jaimey at this point. "You have five minutes more, Professor," I joked. "We will try to be a better class," added Jeff.

Resuming his presentation, Jaimey continued with an interesting account of many of the social forces at work at the turn of the century in France -- the rising tide of nationalism (and resulting sense of humiliation) following the Franco-Prussian War, the modernization of the military, the economic changes which were throwing different classes together. And he concluded with a quotation from from the historian Michael Winock:

"At the end of the nineteenth century, in one sector of public opinion, a fortress-France nationalism asserted itself whose mission was to defend the cohesive social organism against modernity. It directed its antagonism first and foremost against the democratic and liberal regime, the "Jewish, Masonic Republic," but beneath the political agenda one observed a spiritual reaction against decadence by people who understood the defense of French interests to be that of a completed civilization at war with the new mobility of things and beings... Anti-Drefusards banked on two institutions: the Church and the army. Organized in accordance with principles of unity and hierarchy, these served by their very nature, to strengthen the social fabric."

Prompted by the end of this quotation, we talked briefly about the attitude of Proust (a Dreyfusard) towards the institution of the army, which was largely Anti-Dreyfusard.

In the Narrator's long discussion of military strategy, Marie-José wondered, was Proust intending to poke fun at its pretensions? He compares military strategy to art, but surely this comparison must be facetious?

The group agreed that Proust's descriptions of French military traditions were probably intended as a kind of satire -- how else can we understand all of those parades, and line-ups and requests for permission that the Narrator observes when he visits Saint-Loup at the barracks. Certainly the army comes across as a creaky, archaic organization, fighting against modernity.

2. Mme de Villeparisis' Party and the Profusion of Identity in Changing Times

The mention of modernity led us into a longer discussion of the profusion (and confusion) of identity that we witness among the guests at Mme de Villeparsis' tea party.

You have the aristocrats like Mme de Guermantes and her buffoonish husband, who struck us as quite dull, like museum pieces of a past era of daft, anti-intellectual nobility. Then you have Mme de Villeparisis and her two absent friends, who occupy a slightly lower rung on the social ladder due to unspecified amorous adventures in their youth. (Trying to recall the nature of these adventures and failing, Marie-Jose and I agreed that they had been "naughty.") Then you have the florid and self-regarding character Legrandin, who falls more in the upper middle-class. Jennifer read aloud for us his fervent attempt to distinguish himself from the "frivolous-minded" high society set:

"Ah, those aristocrats! The Terror was greatly to blame for not cutting the heads off every one of them. They are all disreputable scum, when they are not simply dreary idiots. Still, my poor boy, if that sort of thing amuses you! ... The truth is that I scarcely belong to this earth upon which I feel myself such an exile; it takes all the force of the law of gravity to hold me here, to keep me from escaping into another sphere" (GW, 202-203).

I countered that Legrandin does in fact appear at Mme Villeparisis' tea party later that evening, and sucks up quite obviously to the hostess, which blurs this professed identity as an outsider. But then I quickly acknowledged that I was quibbling: if Legrandin expresses a wish that the Terror cut off the heads of all aristocrats then he surely is defining himself as exactly not one of them!

Jennifer highlighted for all of us what she asserted is (quite paradoxically) a universal feeling: the suspicion that we are all alone ("we" here being you, I, each person in his or her private thoughts). Each of us, argued Jennifer, has the feeling, more often than we admit, that we are not like anybody else, that we are an exile, that we may even be said to belong to a... different planet.

I mentioned how Proust indicates that the confusion and alienation of these times was not restricted to the upper classs, either. Even Françoise's daughter has airs now, dismissing life in the country for the supposedly sylish life she now leads in Paris. (GW, 194). It seems that everyone in the novel is flailing around, trying to find a fixed identity in a flood of social and economic changes.

3. When It Turns It Turns

This led us to discuss the terrible way in which things go terribly wrong for Bloch at the party.

He is treated respectfully at first by Mme de Villeparisis (who has a practical purpose for him: she wants him to arrange a theatrical performance for her benifit at a later social occasion). With his Semitic features, his goatee, his pinze-neze, he is viewed as a piece of exotica, an "oriental," and as such, an asset to the party. Even M. de Norpois initially has some praise for Bloch, remarking that "He is quite amusing, with his old-fashioned, rather solemn way of speaking" (GW, 328). But then, not knowing the acquired rules of the old aristocracy, Bloch pushes too far. Soon enough, annoyed to be confronted so directly, Norpois turns the conversation about the Dreyfus affair into a personal indictment of Bloch himself:

"But once the machinery of Government has been set in motion," asks Norpois, "will you have ears for the voice of authority? When it bids you perform your duty as a citizen will you take your stand in the ranks of law and order? When its patriotic appeal sounds, will you have the wisdom not to turn a deaf ear but to answer: 'Present!'?" (GW, 331).

Bloch is alarmed, but also flattered by the sense that he was considered a representative of a whole community. He doesn't know it is about to get worse, so it surprises him when he directs a question to another guest, M. d' Argencourt, only to find that the molecules in the air have changed without his noticing it. He asks, casually, if the gentleman is a Dreyfusard or not, and he is met with a curt answer: "It is a question that concerns only the French themselves, don't you think?"

Suddenly, Bloch is not even entitled to discuss the question, being an outsider, a foreigner, a Jew. The next paragraph is an astonishing description of how a conformist impulse spreads through a room of people. It can happen and does happen anywhere, anytime:

"Bloch colored; M. d'Argencourt smiled, looking round the room, and if this smile, so long as it was directed at the rest of the company, was charged with malice at Bloch's expense, he tempered it with cordiality when finally it came to rest on the face of [Bloch], so as to deprive him of any excuse for annoyance at the words he had just heard, though those words remained just as cruel. Mme de Guermantes muttered something in M. d'Argencourt's ear which I could not catch but which must have referred to Bloch's religion, for there flitted at that moment over the face of the Duchess that expression to which one's fear of being noticed by the person one is speaking of gives a certain hesitancy and falseness mixed with the inquisitive, malicious amusement..." (GW, 333-334).

Bloch tries to speak to the Duc de Chatellerault next to him. But he finds no relief there either. The Narrator tells us that "the young Duke, who felt that everyone was turning against Bloch, and was a coward as people often are in society... replied: "Forgive me Monsieur, if I don't discuss the Dreyfus case with you; it is a subject which, on principle, I never mention except among Japhetics" (GW, 334). (Japhetics are the supposed descendents of the son of Noah who founded the Caucasian race...)

And one by one they all turn against him. Mme de Villeparisis even goes so far as to pretend to fall asleep rather than say goodbye to Bloch.

Jaimey mentioned Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism in his presentation. Certainly this scene points to the psychology of "othering" and the urge for conformity behind the totalitarian impulse.

4. "Rachel when from the Lord" and Other Variations on the Theme of Cruelty

At this point we began talking about the experiences of the Narrator earlier that afternoon, which he spent in the company of Saint-Loup and his girlfriend Zézette (or as the Narrator prefers to call her, referring to when she worked at a brothel, "Rachel when from the Lord").

I spoke up to say that the cruelty towards Bloch at Mme de Villeparsis' tea party seemed to me to be foreshadowed by many of the incidents that took place earlier in the day.

First, of course, Rachel is Jewish, like Bloch. This makes her an outsider to French society. (Marie-José and Renée debated briefly Swann's status as a Jew here. And Jaimey pointed out that Marcel Proust himself was Jewish, by his mother, though the family identified as Roman Catholic.) I reminded our group of the memorable way the madame at the brothel in the last volume had pushed Rachel on the Narrator:

"She's Jewish. How about that?... Think of that, my boy, a Jewess! Wouldn't that be thrilling? Rrrr!" (WBG, 206)

(What is the French original for this "Rrrr" -- Lucie? Anybody?)

The Narrator describes her as having a "thin and angular face... framed with curly black hair, irregular as though outlined in pen-strokes upon a wash-drawing of Indian ink..." (WBG, 206). He "others" her with words quite as effectively as the mistress of the brothel.

But more than just their common Jewish ancestry, Rachel is, again like Bloch, at the center of a collective act of cruelty -- though interestingly, in Rachel's case she is the perpetrator.

At the theater where Saint-Loup and the Narrator spend the afternoon with her, it turns out that Rachel has orchestrated the humiliation of a young actress. The poor girl is peforming a recital of old songs, and Rachel, knowing this, has planted friends in the crowd to mock and heckle as she performs. The audience jeers and shouts vulgar comments at her, and, as the Narrator observes it, "...each fluty note from the stage increased the deliberate hilarity until it verged on the scandalous" (GW, 229). It is a gruesome display... "The unhappy woman, sweating with anguish under the grease-paint... then stopped with a look of misery and rage which succeeded only in increasing the uproar" (GW, 229).

The Narrator uses this as an opportunity to share with us a profound insight into the human psyche:

"I did my utmost to pay no more heed to the incident... the idea of deliberate unkindness being too painful for me to bear. And yet, just as our pity for misfortune is perhaps not very precise since in our imagination we re-create a whole world of grief by which the unfortunate who has to struggle against it has no thought of being moved to self-pity, so unkindness has probably not in the minds of the unkind that pure and voluptuous cruelty which we find it so painful to imagine. Hatred inspires them, anger prompts them to an ardour and an activity in which there is no great joy; sadism is needed to extract any pleasure from it; whereas unkind people suppose themselves to be punishing equally unkind. Rachel certainly imagined that the actress whom she had tortured was far from being of interest to anyone, and that in any case, by having her hissed off the stage, she was herself avenging an outrage on good taste and teaching an unworthy colleague a lesson" (GW, 230).

It is interesting to compare this with the humiliation that Zézette herself experienced when she performed one night for a group of officer friends of Saint-Loup's (according to Mme de Villeparisis' telling at Balbec). Or to compare what happened at the theater to more quiet but not less devastating humiliation doled out to Bloch at the party that would take place later in the evening. Proust seems to be saying that each event is unique -- and also strangely alike. He seems to be hinting that we cannot vilify and "other" even the perpetrators of cruelty, because they too can be its victims, and each of us, in our lives, will play both roles.

I commented to the group here that I am glad to see this theme of cruelty emerge in the novel, as a kind of counterweight to the theme of love. Both, Proust suggests, arise from the same power of the imagination -- though one is perhaps more social, a kind of group-think, and the other is usually more private.

We see here that Proust appreciates the dangers, as well as the delights, posed by Romanticism; the non-rational aspects of the mind are valued highly by Proust of course, as an artist, but they are not treated naively either. (By the way, Isaiah Berlin, one of my greatest influences, writes marvelously on this theme, focusing on the Counter-Enlightenment and the German Romantic tradition... I highly recommend his essays if you are interested.)

5. The Pear Trees in Bloom

If I remember correctly, our conversation next led us to the powerful moment when the Narrator first catches sight of Zézette and recognizes that his friend Saint-Loup is madly in love with a cheap bawd who frequents cheap brothels, without his knowing it.

I took the occasion to read aloud the passage that especially affected me to the group:

"The immobility of [Rachel's] thin face, like that of a sheet of paper subjected to the colossal pressure of two atmospheres, seemed to me to be held in equilibrium by two infinities which converged on her without meeting, for she held them apart. Indeed, looking at her, Robert and I, the two of us did not see her from the same side of the mystery... It was not 'Rachel when from the Lord,' who seemed to me of little significance, it was the power of the human imagination, the illusion on which were based the pains of love, that I found so striking. Robert noticed that I seemed moved. I turned my eyes to the pear and cherry trees of the garden opposite, so that he might think that it was their beauty that had touched me. And it did touch me in somewhat the same way; it also brought close to me things of the kind which we not only see with our eyes but also with our hearts... Treasurers of our memories of the golden age, keepers of the promise that reality is not what we suppose, that the splendour of poetry, the wonderful radiance of innocence may shine in it and may be the recompense which we strive to earn, were they not, these great white creatures miraculously bowed over that shade so propitious for rest, for angling or for reading, were they not rather angels?" (GW, 211-212)

I asked the group how they experienced and interpreted these passages. Miriam spoke of the mix of wonder and sadness that we feel when we see beauty in nature... or when we peer into the endless multiplicity of our friends' personalities. She cherishes the way that Proust's characters become more fluid and confounding the further we read.

Some examples include: The genuine acting talent that the Narrator sees in Rachel (after being so summarily dismissed by Mme de Villeparsis)... The unexpected coldness of Saint-Loup when he passes in a military parade and refuses to wave to the Narrator (after he has shown such devotion at other occasions)... The sudden humanity and discretion shown by the Narrator when he refuses to reveal to his friend the vulgar background of his lover...

-- All of these are welcome complications to the character portraits we have come to know.

Before we moved on from this moment when Saint-Loup brought Zézette to meet the Narrator, Jennifer observed that the white-flowering pear trees to which the Narrator turns for comfort are perhaps carrying symbolic weight as well. She pointed us to the way they are described by Proust as enveloping grubby little houses: "... as if all the dwellings, all the enclosed spaces in the village, were on their way to make their first communion on the same solemn day" (GW, 204).

So Jennifer suggested that the Narrator may be turning to look at them so as to purify or cleanse his gaze, to restore himself to the high-minded ideals of love, which his friend perceives. He is perhaps trying to cross over into the other atmosphere, Saint-Loup's atmosphere -- or a least to get a draft of it.

Françoise concurred with this and also emphasized the way that the Narrator is no doubt also experiencing shock, the dizzy feeling of witnessing two worlds, formerly separate, coming together.

6. The Sheer Pleasure of Sentences

Following up on Florence's observation last year that she would like to find a way to share the musicality and beauty of Proust's writings, I offered the following sentence up to the group just because I liked it:

"One morning, after several weeks of showers and storms, I heard in my chimney -- instead of the formless, elastic, sombre wind which stirred in me a longing to go to the sea -- the cooing of the pigeons, nesting in the wall outside; shimmering and unexpected like a first hyacinth gently tearing open its nutritious heart to release its flower of sound, mauve and satin-soft, letting into my still dark and shuttered bedroom as through an opened window the warmth, the brightness, the fatigue of a first fine day" (GW, 186-187).

Florence answered with another quote, describing a blanket, which, though I couldn't understand the French, was lovely to the ear (can someone supply me with the original?)

7. Late in the Evening, My Tale of a Failed Seduction

As the hour grew late, and my state of sleep deprivation became more dire (working on and celebrating the election well into the night before), our group began to talk about the reading for the next month.

Someone mentioned M. de Charlus, and how he escorts the Narrator on his way out of Mme de Villeparsis' party. Having already read ahead to this part myself, I started to ramble about much this scene comported with own experience of unwanted attention -- an attempted seduction -- when I was in my 20s living in Los Angeles...

The story, in short: A friend of mine urged me to write to an older Christian man who served as a kind of mentor to her boyfriend. I figured it wouldn't hurt to write him a letter -- even though I wasn't religious myself. So one day, on a whim, I sent him a letter full of soul-searching. He responded by sending me a series of extravagent gifts (which I sensed carried with them an implicit obligation on my part -- unspecified). I recall packages containing the collected works of C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, etc. Soon he was calling me, his Southern drawl pouring through the receiver of my phone like something sticky and from a bottle. He had all the tricks, asking me to rely on him alone to grapple with these questions of meaning and truth, seeking to meet me in person so we could "really talk," and so on. I wanted nothing more to do with him -- despite my guilt about the books he had sent. What had I been thinking writing to this stanger? I told him not to call. But as I grew more stern, he made a point of recalling private admissions I had made in my letter about my relationship with my parents. I had the distinct feeling that he had created a file on me in his filing cabinet, along with who knows how many other young men. It was creepy...

But anyway, as I rambled I realized that I was, well, rambling. Jaimey said, smiling broadly: "Tom! Stop!"

The great thing, though, we all know one another so well by now that I didn't feel bad -- only amused. We can ramble with friends about icky personal remembrances, even at a literary reading group. And I swear, when you get to next month's reading, you will see exactly what I am talking about.

Setenay mentioned that cultural traditions allow different degrees of closeness between men. For example, men in Turkey will often hold hands as they talk --

"Oh in America we never do that," I said. "Men here are very reserved with each other. Except for one glaring exception..."

The group waited to hear where I was going with this.

Old men in locker rooms.

Why?Why do they insist on being dramatically, unapologetically naked, one leg up on the bench, toweling the backs of their necks for minutes at a time?

(I believe that I may have leapt to my feet and demonstrated this gesture, jiggling my hips and miming drying my neck with a towel.)

Fine, I want to say. So you're naked! It's all guys here, so no big deal. But I ask: can't you show some basic modesty? Can't you turn, as one would naturally, to your locker? Can't you get the back of your body dried off and back in your clothes more efficiently, like us younger men?

Luckily, the meeting ended shortly after that, sparing the group more uncensored eruptions from my inner life.

Okay. With that I hereby end this meeting's notes. Please add anything I have forgotten in the comments or send me an email and I will post it.

"Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the‘world,’ from the people who have not directly perceived it, by amedium the permeability of which is of infinite variation and remainsunknown to ourselves; having learned by experience that some importantutterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated (such as thoseso enthusiastic speeches which I used at one time to make to allcomers and on every occasion on the subject of Mme Swann) has founditself, often simply on account of our anxiety, immediately hiddenunder a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tinyword, which we ourselves have forgotten, or else a word never otteredby us but formed on its course by the imperfect refraction of adifferent word, can be transported without ever halting for anyobstacle to infinite distances — in the present instance to thePrincesse de Guermantes — and succeed in diverting at our expense thebanquet of the gods. What we actually recall of our conduct remainsunknown to our nearest neighbour; what we have forgotten that we eversaid, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity evenin another planet, and the image that other people form of our actionsand behaviour is no more like that which we form of them ourselves,than is like an original drawing a spoiled copy in which, at onepoint, for a black line, we find an empty gap, and for a blank spacean unaccountable contour. It may be, all the same, that what has notbeen transcribed is some non-existent feature which we behold merelyin our purblind self-esteem, and that what seems to us added is indeeda part of ourselves, but so essential a part as to have escaped ournotice. So that this strange print which seems to us to have so littleresemblance to ourselves bears sometimes the same stamp of truth,scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and useful, as a photographtaken by X-rays. Not that that is any reason why we should recogniseourselves in it. A man who is in the habit of smiling in the glass athis handsome face and stalwart figure, if you shew him theirradiograph, will have, face to face with that rosary of bones,labelled as being the image of himself, the same suspicion of error asthe visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of agirl, reads in his catalogue: “Dromedary resting.” Later on, thisdiscrepancy between our portraits, according as it was our own handthat drew them or another, I was to register in the case of othersthan myself, living placidly in the midst of a collection ofphotographs which they themselves had taken while round about themgrinned frightful faces, invisible to them as a rule, but plungingthem in stupor if an accident were to reveal them with the warning:“This is you.”

"Certainly Robert was not in the least of the type of son who, when hegoes out with his mother, feels that an attitude of exasperationtowards her ought to balance the smiles and bows which he bestows onstrangers. Nothing is more common than this odious form of vengeanceon the part of those who appear to believe that rudeness to one’s ownfamily is the natural complement to one’s ceremonial behaviour.Whatever the wretched mother may say, her son, as though he had beentaken to the house against his will and wished to make her pay dearlyfor his presence, refutes immediately, with an ironical, precise,cruel contradiction, the timidly ventured assertion; the mother atonce conforms, though without thereby disarming him, to the opinion ofthis superior being of whom she will continue to boast to everyone,when he is not present, as having a charming nature, and who all thesame spares her none of his keenest thrusts."

- I hugely disagree with the following : " le manque d education des gens du peuple ....qu elle eprouve a voir la chair qui souffre": it makes me think that Proust does not have a full good knowledge of ALL social levels, too klicheeic [Is this a word? a typo? I have no idea. Florence? -- Tom]...

Just for fun, I put this into Google Translate and here is what it gave us in English:]

To Gustave L. W."Amants.heureux lovers" (La Fontaine)

Love hearts up smelling like roses!It is nice to know a heart full of love,To see them until its bottom wide hatched sourcesWhich are so fast and clear by this brilliant day.Yet the Hearts magnets look much betterAt night exhilarating even more than the dayAt night, light or dark, which makes the heavensDisorder sweet, mysterious as love.Night! the sea! the only two things magical!Tight in his gorgeous coat and silkyI get lost in my eyes drowning in his eyes,His indifferent eyes, languid and mystical.

11/29/2012

Is French really the language of love? Stanford scholar Marilyn Yalom explores the topic in her latest book "How the French Invented Love." Part memoir and part literary history, Yalom discusses why the French have championed themselves as the ultimate experts in love for centuries, and how they've kept the flames of romance burning up to the present day.